Advisory Services
Sample of Advisory Services
- Analytics – Cause and effect analysis
- Cash and expense budgeting
- Financial impact reports for improved decision-making
- Key Performance Indicators – KPI’s – Reports & recommendations
- New entity (Business) creation
- Start-up – Cash burn analysis
- Profitability analysis – Portfolio and segments
- Reasonable compensation recommendations
- Sales/Demand forecasting
Advisory Services to Help you Make Better, More Informed Decisions
We offer advisory services to assist you in making better, more informed decisions. Are your jobs profitable? Which segments of your business are profitable or most profitable? What methods do you currently use to come these conclusions? This is an aspect of Accounting broadly defined as Managerial Accounting. Compliance is necessary, but Decision Makers and Owners also need data to understand what parts of their business offer the biggest return on their money, time, and sweat equity.
What Advisory Services do Small Business Clients Value?
As the saying goes, cash is king, and every business should have a cash management plan. Proper cash management draws from sales, debt servicing, capital expenditures, financing activities and expenses so that a clear picture emerges as to the amount of cash an organization needs to meet its objectives. Cash shortfalls are often a symptom for larger problems. Outside of obvious issues such as sales downturns, manufacturers and service providers need to understand their costs! Unit costs to manufacture and deliver (1) “widget” or complete and deliver a service are often misunderstood or not considered.
A business that mis-costs its products or services is in jeopardy of either losing profitable opportunities (when they quote a price higher than necessary to cover their inflated unit costs) or accepting jobs or contracts at prices that do not reflect their true costs. The net result is the business is either non-competitive on price (lost business) or their operating performance suffers (lost profits). This is where a lot of Accountants struggle, because they’ve never been exposed to areas outside their primary training-compliance. My professional career combined with my expertise in accounting and taxation, gives me a unique perspective. I’m an Advisor because I’ve lived it.
Extracting data from QuickBooks can highlight aspects of a business that a Client was not previously aware of. Associating direct costs to each revenue stream enables the owner to understand the possible outcomes for profitability if their sales volume increases by a given percentage. This variable cost/sales volume relationship helps owners to understand the ramifications of expected sales fluctuations on their business’s operating performance.
About Key Performance Indicators – KPI’s
Budgets help constrain the actions a company may want to make during the course of an operating period if an action is outside budgeted activities. But business is fluid and dynamic – this makes budgets, by their nature, inflexible. Budgets compare actual amounts to budgeted amounts and the variance from budget. If a company’s sales exceeded their sales forecast or actual expenses were lower than budget, then it will show a favorable variance. Budgets are helpful but they don’t provide answers as to “why.” Why did the operation perform better than expectations? Knowing these specifics give Decision Makers/Owners the ability to make financing, pricing, spending or volume decisions more accurately than flipping coins, guessing or using their gut. By analyzing the causes and effects of their operating data, this insight is within reach – they just need to know the methods to extract it. This is the value that Key Performance Indicators – KPI’s provide.
Do You Have the Right Business Advisor/Strategic Partner?
Would-be Business Owners need to understand the various organizational structures and the financial and tax implications that are attached to each. For established Businesses, our experience in finance, operations, and strategic planning combined with our expertise in accounting and taxation, give us a unique and powerful perspective to help you run your business better and more efficiently. See our Contact Page. We’ll create a plan to give you the type of insight your business needs.
